Item identification is important in a wide range of industries, from manufacturing to food service. One specific industry where the identification of items is of life and death importance is health care. The proper identification of pills, fluids, drugs, equipment, and even the patients themselves is critical to providing effective and safe care and treatment. Systems which can reduce human error, especially human error in administering intravenous (“IV”) drugs and other IV substances, are helpful to prevent mistakes and reduce the requirement for health care supervision.
Bar codes have been used to identify medicines, foods, patients, equipment, etc. While bar codes systems can be effective, such systems require operators to scan the appropriate bar code, and thus require extra labor and are still subject to human error. Another previous solution to the identification of health care items has been to use radio frequency identification (“RFID”) technology in hospital settings. RFID tags are now included in many medical systems, food trays, medication containers, patient wrist bands, etc. One proposed solution to the problem of verifying/controlling the administering of IV's is to add an RFID tag to IV fluid bags and an RFID transceiver to IV fluid pumps used to meter fluids to the patient. In such a system, the IV fluid pump can identify the fluid inside an IV fluid bag by wirelessly reading the bags RFID tag. If the identifier received from IV bag RFID does not match an expected value, the fluid pump automatically can sound an alarm and suspend or block administration of the fluid to the patient.
Using RFID technology in the close quarters of a hospital room can lead to confusion when many items in the room are equipped with RFID tags. Multiple patients may be in the room and patients may be receiving multiple IV fluids from multiple IV bags. Also, IV bags not currently in use may also be present in the room for storage or in trash receptacles. In such a crowded environment an RFID reader may be unable to uniquely identify the wireless signals emitted by the RFID tag on an IV bag coupled to the IV fluid pump. This presents the potential for error that could jeopardize patient safety.